MADISON, Wis. — The legend of Russell Wilson as a Wisconsin quarterback began with a dare from Badgers receiver Nick Toon on the 30-yard line of Camp Randall Stadium: “Bet you can’t hit the crossbar from here.”

Wilson flashed a quick smile before unleashing a 40-yard spiral that collided with the crossbar with such force that the sound — DOINGGGGGGG! — echoed through Camp Randall.

“I just shook my head,” Toon said of his reaction that July afternoon.

With his arrival as a one-year transfer from North Carolina State, Wilson is ringing in a new era of Wisconsin football, which has always been heavy on steak and light on sizzle. The addition of the dynamic Wilson marks an evolution for the Badgers from their between-the-tackles roots.

Wisconsin will still have plenty of tight ends and fullbacks lumbering onto the field, but the skills Wilson displayed in amassing 76 passing and 17 rushing touchdowns during his three years as the starting quarterback at N.C. State will add a shot of third-down innovation to the methodical Badgers.

Wilson’s most notable pass may have been forgoing the chance to play in Auburn’s productive spread offense for the Badgers’ pro-style attack, a choice that puts No. 11 Wisconsin on the outskirts of the national title conversation. Wilson arrives as a complete package: athletic enough to be picked in the fourth round of the baseball draft, magnetic enough to be elected a Wisconsin captain after less than two months on campus, and smart enough to graduate from N.C. State in three years.

He is also preparing for his final college football season in the aftermath of a difficult year, one in which he struggled to hit minor league fastballs, endured a public break from N.C. State’s football program and buried his father.

But the legend of Wilson is growing here. Asked about the crossbar strike, he said with a smile: “I thought I was standing on the 40. But whatever.”

A Positive Upbringing

Wilson’s grandfather Harrison Wilson Jr. served as the president of Norfolk State. His father, Harrison Wilson III, attended Dartmouth and bypassed a chance to play in the N.F.L. to attend law school at Virginia. After law school, he went to training camp with the San Diego Chargers and earned the nickname Professor before being released when the team made its final roster cuts.

Harrison Wilson III and his wife, Tammy, sent their three children to the prestigious Collegiate School in Richmond, Va., a K-12 private school with an annual tuition that starts at more than $17,000. Russell’s older brother, Harrison IV, said that he and Russell “stuck out like sore thumbs” because they were African-Americans in a school in which about 90 percent of the students were white.

So when Charlie McFall, who coached Russell and Harrison IV, received a complaint that he recruited Russell to play sports there, he replied, “If I recruited him, I did when he was in kindergarten.”

The tales of Russell Wilson’s athletic prowess began in fifth grade, when he was the ball boy for his brother’s high school games. During a game, a referee hollered over to the Collegiate sideline for a ball, and Russell responded by throwing a laser across the field.

“The official said, ‘Oh my goodness.’ And I thought to myself, I’m going to hang around for Russell,” said McFall, who retired as the coach and athletic director after Wilson led Collegiate to three straight state titles and a 31-2 overall record. “He’s very accurate with a great touch, and he’s been that way since elementary school.”

Wilson watched his older brother go to Richmond and play baseball and football, the sports their father played at Dartmouth. (The brothers claim the family’s best athlete is their sister, Anna, a 14-year-old eighth grader at Collegiate who Russell said was considered one of the best point guards in her age group nationally.)

Every Saturday, the Wilson children woke at 7 a.m. to a lawnmower’s rumble, an audible reminder that there was no sleeping in. Even leisure trips presented a chance to learn, as Harrison IV said each drive to an Amateur Athletic Union game would inevitably lead to a teachable moment.

“It was like an old sitcom: there’s always a life lesson,” Harrison IV said. “It was like ‘The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air’ or ‘Full House.’ ”

For all the education they received, formal and not, Harrison IV said he and his brother were proud to pay their father back by earning athletic scholarships to college.

“It was one of our goals,” he said. “A reason why we wanted to get scholarships is a way to repay our parents for sending us to a K-12 school that was challenging and wasn’t cheap.”

Wilson’s father struggled with diabetes for years, but he saw Harrison IV marry, even dancing at the wedding despite being unable to walk. The day after Wilson was drafted by the Colorado Rockies, in June 2010, he returned to Richmond from Raleigh, N.C., to deliver the good news to his father.

A few hours later, in a hallway 50 yards from his father’s hospital room, Russell and his mother stopped in the middle of a conversation. “The Holy Spirit came between us and said, ‘You need to go back in there,’ ” Wilson said. When he got to the doorway, he noticed the heart monitor moving normally.

“As soon as I walk in and say, ‘Dad, I’m here,’ the line goes flat,” Wilson said. “That’s how I knew he could hear me.”

About 1,200 people attended his father’s funeral, which Tom Holliday, an assistant baseball coach at N.C. State, said was essentially “conducted and written” by Russell. Harrison IV may have told the most fitting story that day when he recalled returning an interception 80 yards for a touchdown and looking back to see if any defenders were chasing him. Instead he saw his father, in a suit and fresh from court, sprinting alongside on the sideline.

Photo

Russell Wilson is ringing in a new era of Wisconsin football.Credit
Andy Manis for The New York Times

“He’s always been by our side,” Harrison IV said. “To me, that depicted who he was.”

Moving On

If Wilson does propel Wisconsin into the national title race, an awkward question will face N. C. State: Why would a quarterback whose high character matched his production not be welcomed back. In a telephone interview, N.C. State Coach Tom O’Brien’s icy tone summed up the awkward situation.

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“We’re very happy with Mike Glennon going forward,” O’Brien said of his new starting quarterback. “It wasn’t about individuals, it was a decision about team and the team going forward and the commitment to the program.”

Wilson’s baseball duties ultimately took too much time away from football. The possibility loomed that Glennon, once considered the third best quarterback prospect in the country, could transfer if Wilson came back. And there was a chance that Wilson could stick with baseball, which would have left O’Brien without a capable quarterback. Wilson took the news hard.

“That’s where I wanted to play my senior year,” Wilson said. “That’s where I played three years. After what occurred where I couldn’t compete for the starting job, I had to move on and have better opportunities in terms of playing.”

Wilson led N.C. State to three victories over North Carolina, and a 9-4 record last season that included a victory over West Virginia in the Champs Sports Bowl. O’Brien lauded Wilson’s character, recalling him putting on a Santa hat to give out gifts at a Toys for Tots event, signing autographs for hours and reading to grade school children in his free time.

“We certainly wish him the best,” O’Brien said.

Between the third and the fourth quarter of every Wisconsin home game, the students hop up and down at the command of House of Pain’s 1992 song “Jump Around.”

It could be said that for years the fans did not have a whole lot of other reasons to jump from their seats. Wisconsin’s most treasured football export has always been its beefy homegrown linemen, and the Badgers have always forged their bruising identity between the tackles. Wisconsin has traditionally relied on heady but unspectacular quarterbacks handing off to punishing tailbacks like Ron Dayne, Anthony Davis and P. J. Hill.

Wisconsin’s archetype became a key recruiting tool when Bielema paraded his top eight linemen — more than 2,500 pounds of protection — into a room to meet Wilson on his visit this summer.

“He was taken aback,” Bielema said of the 5-foot-11 Wilson. “These guys are really big.”

Bielema jumped into action when he learned that N.C. State had released Wilson from his scholarship. When Bielema found out that N.C.A.A. rules prohibited him from watching Wilson play baseball, he proposed legislation to change the rule. (It was not.) He checked Wilson’s box score from the Class A Asheville Tourists every morning and e-mailed him a note of encouragement or congratulations. He even dispatched the Badgers’ offensive coordinator, Paul Chryst, to Collegiate to learn more about Wilson.

“He wanted to best understand this young man,” said Mark Palyo, who was the offensive coordinator when Wilson was at Collegiate and is now the coach. “That really meant a lot.”

A big part of Wilson’s decision ultimately came down to Wisconsin’s pro-style offense, which he considered a graduate school for his football education.

“We run what they run,” Bielema said of the N.F.L. “It’s not like we’re doing anything that’s rocket science.”

One of the few questions Chryst asked about football at Collegiate revolved around Wilson’s ability to learn. That has not seemed to be a problem. Wilson is rarely spotted at Wisconsin’s football facility without his playbook or a binder ring filled with cards depicting the Badgers’ plays.

Wilson struggled in Asheville, hitting .228. Marc Gustafson, the senior director of player development for the Rockies, said there was an obvious flaw. “In baseball, you need at-bats,” he said. “You have to be out there every single day.”

Asheville’s hitting coach, Lenn Sakata, said that Wilson struggled to hit fastballs and would probably need 1,500 more at-bats before reaching the majors.

“Playing another three years in minors didn’t appeal to him,” Sakata said. “Football offered immediate rewards in his mind.”

The Rockies were disappointed in Wilson’s decision to leave in the middle of the season to play football, but say they will be patient. They have had success with other football players like Todd Helton and Seth Smith. Colorado recently drafted the former Clemson quarterback Kyle Parker, Wilson’s road roommate in Asheville, in the first round. Sakata took a particular fondness to Wilson through hours of batting practice.

Gustafson said he thought enough of Wilson that, “I’d take him home to be my son.”

Sakata said he was blown away by Wilson’s work ethic and demeanor.

“I miss him,” Sakata said. “I got to get him out of my mind and work with the kids that we have here. He’s the kind of kid that gets inside of you a little.”

Wilson’s baseball agent, Mark Rodgers, jokes that Wilson “can’t have both a wife and a girlfriend,” but he will have to choose one by next spring. In the meantime, he and his fiancée packed up a moving van and drove 16 ½ hours from Asheville, N.C., to Madison for one last shot at college football.

“I truly believe that I can play in the N.F.L.,” Wilson said, “and I truly believe that I can play Major League Baseball.”

As the legend of Russell Wilson moves to Wisconsin, perhaps the most interesting part is that no one is quite sure where it will go from here.

Correction: September 4, 2011

A chart last Sunday with an article about quarterback Russell Wilson and his transfer to Wisconsin from N.C. State described incorrectly quarterback Cam Newton’s transfer when he was in college. Newton, now with the Carolina Panthers, transferred from the University of Florida to a junior college and then to Auburn; he did not go directly to Auburn from Florida.

Correction: September 4, 2011

An earlier version of this correction erroneously stated, as did the original article, that Cam Newton transferred directly to Auburn from Florida.

A version of this article appears in print on August 28, 2011, on Page SP1 of the New York edition with the headline: The Outsiders: The addition of quarterback Russell Wilson strays from Wisconsin’s roots and puts it on target for a title run. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe